Internet History

The
collection
of people, hardware, and software ­- the multiaccess computer together with its
local community of users -- will become a node in a geographically distributed
computer network. Let us assume for a moment that such a network has been formed.

Who invented the Internet? Each of the individual Internet application chapters
starts with a specific section on the history of how
it was invented.
This particular section describes the history of the invention of the underlying
Internet itself.

The Internet has become
such an integral part of our lives, with such powerful capabilities,
that it is easy to forget that this technological marvel was created by the
long, hard, dedicated efforts of human beings -- folks who had a vision
of what universal networking
could become and worked to make it happen. The key people,
projects, and organizations that helped create the Internet
are described below, first in a top-level summary and then in sections
in roughly
chronological
order.